Harriet Mayor Fulbright
Old Myths and New Realities

When I saw the subject of your week here, I immediately turned to the book by Senator Fulbright called "Old Myths and New Realities." It was based on a speech he delivered in the Senate in 1964, before an almost empty Senate, and it put forth his views on United States foreign policy, both as it was and as it should have been, during that time. He also described the fundamentals of foreign policy, or the basic premises to be considered in the conduct of business with other nations. These guidelines are so relevant to the many situations we find ourselves in today that we would do well to use them to measure our present actions and strategies, and so without further introduction, I will outline them for you now. These are by and large his words.

"There is an inevitable divergence, attributable to the imperfections of the human mind, between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it. As long as our perceptions are reasonably close to objective reality, it is possible for us to act upon our problems in a rational and appropriate manner. But when our perceptions fail to keep pace with events, when we refuse to believe something because it displeases or frightens us, or is simply startlingly unfamiliar, then the gap between fact and perceptions becomes a chasm, and action becomes irrelevant and irrational.

"There has always been some divergence between the realities of foreign policy and our ideas about it. This divergence is dangerous and unnecessary - dangerous because it can reduce foreign policy to a fraudulent game of imagery and appearances, unnecessary because it can be overcome by the determination of men in high office to dispel prevailing misconceptions through the candid dissemination of unpleasant but inescapable facts.

"We are a people used to looking at the world and indeed at ourselves, in moralistic rather than empirical terms. We are predisposed to regard any conflict as a clash between good and evil rather than as simply a clash between conflicting interests. We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America - with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people.

"I believe that we must try to overcome this excessive moralism, which binds us to old myths and blinds us to new realities and, worse still, leads us to regard new and unfamiliar ideas with fear and mistrust…." Rather "We must dare to think 'unthinkable thoughts.' We must learn to explore all of the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome rather than fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things,' because when things become 'unthinkable,' thinking stops and actions becomes mindless. If we are to disabuse ourselves of old myths, and to act wisely and creatively upon the new realities of our time, we must think and talk about our problems with perfect freedom, remembering, as Woodrow Wilson said, that 'The greatest freedom of speech is the greatest safety because, is a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.'

"A nation's security depends upon its overall position in the world - on its political and economic strength as well as its military power, on its diplomacy and foreign trade, its alliances and associations, and on the character and quality of its internal life. . . Security, in short, is not merely a military and technological commodity, but a combination of many elements, all of which must be taken into account in the shaping of national policy. The uncritical acceptance of a simple equation between security and armaments can only lead us into an accelerating arms race, mounting international tensions, and diminishing security.

"In our quest for world peace the alteration of attitudes is no less important, perhaps more important, than the resolution of issues. It is in the minds of men, after all, that wars are spawned; to act upon the human mind, regardless of the issue or occasion for doing so, is to act upon the source of conflict and the potential source of redemption and reconciliation. It would seem, therefore, that there may be important new things to be learned about international relations through the scholarship of psychologists and psychiatrists.

"Extreme nationalism and dogmatic ideology are luxuries that the human race can no longer afford. It must turn its energies now to the politics of survival. If we do so, we may find in time that we can do better than just survive. We may find that the simple human preference for life and peace has an inspirational force of its own, less intoxicating perhaps than the sacred abstractions of nation and ideology, but far more relevant to the requirements of human life and human happiness.

In fact "Of all the myths that have troubled the lives of modern nations, the most pervading have been those associated with the nation itself. Nationalism, which is pre-eminently a state of mind rather than a state of nature, has become a dominant and universal state of mind in the twentieth century. Designating the sovereign nation-state as the ultimate object of individual loyalty and obligation, the idea of nationalism prevails in every region of the world, in rich nations as well as poor nations, in democracies as well as dictatorships. Nationalism, I believe, is the most powerful single force in [contemporary] world politics, more powerful than communism or democracy or any other system of ideas about social organization.

"It is also the most dangerous. Dividing communities against one another, it has become a universal force at precisely the time in history when technology has made the world a single unit in the physical sense - interdependent for economic, political, and cultural purposes and profoundly interdependent for survival in the nuclear age.

"We must generate expectancies of peace as powerful and self-generating as the expectancy of war. We must learn to deal with our adversaries in terms of the needs and hopes of both sides rather than the demands of one side upon the other. We must remove stridency and bad manners from our diplomacy, because the language of the ultimatum is the language of conflict, because there is no way more certain to turn tension into open conflict than to strike at an adversary's pride and self-respect.

"It is the nation, or more exactly the pervading force of nationalism, that now obstructs our progress in both of these directions. Posing barriers between communities and exacting heavy sacrifices from its citizens to pursue the quarrels which these barriers engender, the sovereign nation in itself is the most pervasive of the old myths that blind us to the realities of our time. Only when we have broken out of the constraints of nationalist mythology will the way be open to the only possible security in the nuclear age - the security of an international community in which [human beings] will be free of the terror of the bomb and free at last to pursue the satisfactions of personal fulfillment in civilized societies. We must broaden the frontiers of our loyalties, never forgetting as we do so that it is the human individual, and not the state or any other community, in whom ultimate sovereignty is vested."

These thoughts are not only the guidelines Senator Fulbright used to forge foreign policy; they are also what propelled him to establish the program that brought you here this year, as it has brought a quarter of a million others both to this country and from here to over 140 countries around the world. Thanks to you and all those others, it has succeeded beyond his wildest hopes and dreams. Fulbright scholars have over the years formed a network across national boundaries and scholarly disciplines; they have reached out as human beings in collaborative enterprises, scholarly research, conferences and just plain wide-ranging conversations. They have connected with other human beings of very different cultures and backgrounds and have found the experience enriching, exhilarating and beneficial to a far wider circle, thanks to the ripple effect of human interaction.

I can only offer heartfelt thanks to you for your part in this amazing process and urge you on for the rest of your lives.